01.10.05

throw down

Outside of my window, the trees whisper to me, they buzz with the wind and fruit in their boughs as across the sea, my mother breaks her back for a couple who do not know the magic of spice or the warm love of an island sun. My mother sends her love, tales of these people and money for us. She says she will come, so soon for us, that she will smother us when she sees us.
I can only imagine now how my soul will leap when she buries my face in that enormous bosom of hers. She will hug me and kiss my face and go over my braids with her careful hands, to see how well I have learnt. Then, when she is satisfied, she will smile at me.
So soon.
The only one more beautiful than she, my aunt, she brings us candies. We will see her off on the horizon, with her basket atop her head and swaying and our mouths will begin to salivate. I only allow them one piece each, and kept the rest in a jar so that it may least a while. I smile at my aunt, I call her auntie. Later I learn that I was her favourite, that the trips were for me and that she had thought my brothers were ugly. Then though, those small candies on warm afternoons and evenings were the closest that I had to my mother.
In her letters, she tells us to be good, she tells us not to look like ragamuffins and roam the streets as if we had no home. She tells us, like any other mother, to wash behind our ears well with cloth and to shine our shoes with blacking each night. I reply, I say we are well. I say daddy is proud of us and we wait longingly for her. I say that money is not the same as a mother�s arms.
I do not say that some nights I go down amongst the reeds and I bathe. I do not say that I am not alone. I do not say that we do more than bathe. I do say, however, that I have always wanted to be a mother, and I can see her smile from my little desk.
As the sound comes over me, it reminds me of the rustling of the canes and I touch my flat stomach gingerly. The island sun kisses her children as it falls and our stars come up. My brothers yell, naming their constellations.

shi-ou-sama at 7:49 p.m.

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